An Aurora in Voile: The Reworked Muslin

Wow. You guys had a lot to say about my last muslin. Thank you so much! And, even though many of you said to save the fabric and stick to knits right now, I’m going to side with the folks who said, “Go for it! Make that dress out of a fabric you’re excited about!” But, not without modifying it first. Some of the modifications I was planning on doing anyway, but some of them were taken straight out of your suggestions. So, thank you!

I made the change to the shoulder seam, and I was surprised to realize that it didn’t fix the gapping. So, I pinched out what will be an invisible dart (a dart that goes from one seam to another, which means you can just fold it our of your pattern), and it did the trick. But, these two fixes brought the front center empire waist seam up a lot. So, I’ll need to add length there in the final dress.

I also sewed the side seam with a teeny tiny seam allowance, and I do think it helped the drag lines from the bust to the side seam, but I don’t like how it also pulled the empire waist seam out from my body. Part of the pulling might have to do with the fact that that seam is now too high, as I mentioned above. But, I’m thinking about adding to the bust pleats to increase the amount of fabric across that area instead of adding a lot to the width of the empire waistline.

I changed the dress pleats into gathers, and I really like the effect (ignore the poorly sewn together seam though!). For the final dress I plan to add many, many more inches to the width of the dress since I think the voile will handle the excess gathers nicely (just like it did for my Saltspring maxi dress), and I think it will also help the dress continue to work with my growing baby belly.

I also released most of the pleats in the back, and it seemed to help a lot with the comfort of the dress through that area. The dress now has more of an A-line shape as a whole, but I think it works better with all the gathers at the front and with my belly. I can always sew down the pleats whenever I decide I no longer have need for maternity wear.

Finally, I think I’ll just go with plain sleeves, probably in a shorter length (maybe something similar, or even a bit shorter still, to my Alma blouse – I do love my Sewaholic patterns!). A shorter, three-quarter length or so sleeve works really nicely for me since I find it to be so transitional through the seasons. Plus, if I ever decide I just want this to be a summery dress (it is voile after all!), I won’t feel so badly about wasting fabric if I were to cut the sleeves into little cap sleeves.

And yet another picture of the baby bump. One more week is in the books. Thirty-two down, eight to go!

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Published by Amy

Amy started the blog Sew Well in 2011 to reflect on her journey to learn how to sew well. She is a scientist by training, and she also enjoys running and renovating her 100+ year old home with her husband and daughters in Seattle, WA.
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Amy- just looked at your first muslin, and think that you might consider using the 10 back with a size 12 front to address the pulling issues successfully. But I agree with other posters- your body will change tangentially in the next eight weeks. Save the special fabric for your new normal/post baby body, and go for a forgiving knit fabric. The only maternity things that I wore post-baby were tunic sweaters, and ditched those as soon as possible.On a related topic, don’t remove tags and wash New born and small baby clothes until your baby arrives–my 9 lb baby arrived too big to wear those sizes! Congratulations and best wishes!

Have you thought about elasticizing the front rather than just using fixed gathers/pleats? Or even creating a drawstring casing for this section? Then you can do the garment in the beautiful voile but it will adjust with you gradually as you grow more, and as you return to normal size (equally as important I think!). At the very least your uterus will grow higher up into your rib cage in these last wks, which makes even a fitted empire waist dress uncomfortable as you get further towards the end (I am 37wks along with my second and reminded of this right now!). Best of luck with everything and enjoy motherhood!

Hello! I’m Amy.

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